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Everything listed under: wellness retreat

Amid all the excitement of our dance hall construction, work has still been continuing on the yurt. For the past few weeks Gary Woolfolk and Bill have been building a railing surrounding the raised yurt deck. Here's Gary and Bill hard at work ... Read More...

This week was a big week for The Cedars Ranch, as the foundation was poured for our new gorgeous dance hall! It's sunrise over The Cedars Ranch, and the activity is about to start ... Everyone's busy as the concrete is being poured ...The workers polish the newly poured concrete to ensure a smooth and even surface ...Such a big part of the story of The Cedars Ranch is its Canadian "roots". Not only because Marilyn is from Canada, but our amazing architects that have h... Read More...

Even though we are still in the early stages of our dance hall construction and site development, this is the time when we need to pin down key structural and design decisions such as where we need electricity outlets, what are our lighting requirements, and certain traffic flow considerations throughout the site. To this aim, our local project architect Jamie Crawley of HA Architecture convened a meeting here at The Cedars Ranch this week with some key wedding professionals, to help us make the... Read More...

While construction had to slow down this week due to the rain, the garden has been coming back to life! Our broccoli and brussel sprouts have been loving all this rain ...We saw this quote recently, and felt it was appropriate for noticing the beauty of Spring around us here at The Cedars Ranch: "The world is full of magic things patiently waiting for our senses to grow sharper." ~ W.B. YeatsWe planted a bunch of bluebonnets, but these guys came up on their own in the garden granite! Read More...

Moving along with the exciting momentum of breaking ground last week, the next step is preparing our dance hall site for plumbing. Here are the plumbing crew on site... The team must first measure and mark out where the trenches will go for the eventual plumbing ... Chase is the lead plumber on the team, and is captured here keeping an eye on everything!Time for the big guns! Once measurements are final, it's time to cut some trenches!Trenches are dug and the ground is covered as ... Read More...

As you know, environmental sustainability is an important value to us here at The Cedars Ranch. There are many ways that our new wedding venue and wellness retreat will be eco-friendly. You can visit our "Green" webpage for more information on how our future event center will be ecologically sustainable and climate responsible. This week we want to share some eco-friendly features in the yurt!Reused and Recycled Materials We both, in conjunction with our interior designers Ja... Read More...

There are still a lot of little details to be completed in the yurt, but we anticipate that in about a month of so it will be ready for weekend rentals. We'll share more about that in a later blogpost! This week our kitchen shelf went up. This is the shelf after Gary Woolfolk, our "master" carpenter coated and sanded it.Our kitchen backsplash tile also went up this week. Read More...

The next step in completing the inside of the yurt was hanging all the interior divider curtains and light fixtures. Joshua's back! You may remember him from being part of the team constructing the yurt. Luckily he's not afraid of heights, and is ready to hang some curtains and fixtures!Here we go on another clockwise tour around the yurt, showing you the new curtains and light fixtures! Read More...

"What's the latest with the yurt?", we hear you say! Well, this month the interior designers and contractors are putting the finishing touches on our new ranch home. We'll take you on a little tour, clockwise, from our living room library all the way around to our kitchen! Read More...

Today we thought you'd enjoy some gorgeous shots of various butterflies seen in our garden, orchards and ranch land throughout 2017. If you remember, early last year Bill was getting quite adept at capturing images of butterflies in our garden. So impressive was his skill, we nicknamed him the "Butterfly Whisperer"!! Well, it seems Bill started to generate some competition for the title towards the end of 2017! Read More...

As the year comes to a close, it's a chance for us both to count all our many blessings and celebrate how far we've come. We feel very fortunate to have so much wonderful support around us - all our friends, family and colleagues, including everyone reading these blogposts (that's you!). We are super appreciative of our small team here at The Cedars Ranch, that helps keep everything ticking along throughout the year! Read More...

We started our week getting into the festive mood, decorating our yurt and surrounding trees with Christmas lights and ornaments. How fun! Little did we know that later in the week nature was going to provide us with her own type of Christmas decoration!Look how cozy this scene looks! Read More...

Drywalling was the big thing going on this week! If you are familiar with yurts at all, you have probably mostly seen open plan yurts with no internal walls. As our yurt is a large "family-size" yurt, and we want it to be a fully functioning self-contained home, we need some internal walls to separate our restroom and kitchen area. Read More...

We hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday. To those of you not living in the US, we hope you had a wonderful weekend also!We have so much to be thankful for. Bill and I were hoping we could host family Thanksgiving in the yurt this year, and we did! Read More...

This week has been moving in week! What joy! While the yurt is still not fully completed inside, we have been making a lot of headway, and we're already reaping the benefits of our new "home"!Perhaps not the most glamorous place to start this week, but still important; our yurt septic tank went in on Wednesday and passed inspection!This week Bill and I became experts at IKEA assembly!! Here's one of our completed IKEA bookcases volunteering as a pantry in our yurt kitchen ... Read More...

Here's our fully constructed yurt in all it's glory. Ta dah ... !!Now it's time to prepare it so we can move in!Here's Marilyn staining the front doors ...The builders were kept busy this week building the stairs up to our back door ... and putting up the internal walls ...It is super exciting to start moving in some of our furniture and appliances. Read More...

Work continues on our yurt construction this week. The start of the week saw a lot of electrical work being done. You can see the electric outlets cut into the yurt platform below ... With a peak under the yurt decking, you can see the box is in place ... Here's Bill checking out some of the yurt floor plan details that are been drawn on the subfloor. Read More...

Things have been moving swiftly along here at The Cedars Ranch this week as we continue to prepare for our yurt construction. Here's the crew from Santiago Concrete, a company based here in Wimberley, pouring and shaping the concrete posts ...Here are the completed concrete pillars that will support the timber platform, upon which will rest our brand new yurt ... The timber for the platform arrived just in time ... Our platform is coming along nicely, as you can see ... Meanwh... Read More...

While the rain has been a welcome visitor here in the Texas Hill Country, it has slightly delayed our efforts in moving forward with our yurt. Luckily the past few days have been dry and sunny, and we've jumped at the opportunity to keep unloading our crates and whitewashing our yurt rafters and lattice frames!Here we are opening those tricky shipment crates ... We laid out the lattice structures that will form the walls of the yurt. This is 1 of the 2 side walls ...Here's Bill and ... Read More...

Our yurt has arrived!! It has been all hands on deck this week, as we move forward with preparing for our new yurt dwelling! The yurt arrived in various shipping containers ...Luckily we rented a Bobcat to help us unload the various containers from the delivery truck ... Here's a big one ...Well you know Bill and I had some fun during the process! I call this one "Balancing Act"! Read More...

We often get asked, especially by friends not living in Texas, “What wildlife do you have?” We thought it might be fun to share a list of the different creatures we live with here, especially during this pre-open season while it is quiet here. This is not an exhaustive list but is a good start!Some of the bigger animals here include:Deer (pictured above)Grey FoxArmadilloRed SquirrelGrey SquirrelEastern Black-Necked Garter Snake (pictured below)Smaller Creatures:Texas Brown Turan... Read More...

Our garden and orchards are abounding in beauty, growth and activity. They are such fun places to be! Thanks to our permaculture gardener Paige Dunlap for all her sweet nurturing of our soil, plants and flowers. Read More...

With working outside lately to prepare for our yurt (more about that next week!), plus all the excitement of the solar eclipse, we've been focusing on the outdoors this week, and the beauty and wonder therein!In particular, this week a facebook friend nominated me for a Nature Photo Challenge - to post a photo of nature on my facebook page every day for 7 days. I duly accepted! Will you?Nature Photo Challenge Day 1:Loving the variety of butterflies in the garden ...Nature Photo Challenge Day 2:P... Read More...

For the past few weeks Marisa Negri has been volunteering every Wednesday at The Cedars Ranch, helping our gardener Paige Dunlap. This week we go behind-the-scenes with Marisa! Here she is pruning some flowers in our garden …We met Marisa one evening when Bill and I were out for dinner. Read More...

We here at The Cedars Ranch have been busy developing a schedule of speakers, programs and events for our first year of operation, i.e. September 2018 – September 2019. Up until now, we have mostly been focusing on the wedding market, but The Cedars Ranch will offer much more than a place for wedding and celebration. It's super exciting for us to start to strategize and plan for our first year. Read More...

Great news! Borrowed & Blue, a popular national go-to wedding planning website, has just published our style shoot, entitled "Rustic Wine-Hued Romance Styled Shoot’s Wedding". Here's the link to check it out: https://www.borrowedandblue.com/us/weddings/rustic-wine-hued-romance-styled-shootNot only that, they loved it so much that, in their words:"We have selected this gem as the creme de la creme ... Read More...

This week we’re taking you on a special wander through our garden. It’s blooming in all kinds of beauty, activity and enchantment! Thank you to our gardener Paige Dunlap for all her hard work and sweet dedication to mother nature here at The Cedars Ranch!Look at this delicious mix of delicate Violas and luscious Swiss Chard here in our garden raised beds …Beautiful vivid blue Delphinium and flourishing Dill …Look what is hanging out on the African Basil …Do you spot the Foxglove climber on an ad... Read More...

Recently we had the good fortune to be visited by our Irish family! Brenda Ryan, our Operations and Sustainability Manager (aka our right-hand woman) is from Ireland, and her parents, even though a continent away, have been supporting us every step of the way since the beginning. It has meant so much to Bill and I to receive their many comments on our social media posts, or private messages of encouragement and friendship along the way. So what a delight it was for everyone, that they trave... Read More...

What a wonderful day we had on Saturday, being one of the featured gardens on The Wimberley Garden Club's annual Garden Tour!We had a steady stream of visitors all day. In the words of our friend Paige Dunlap, who’s our gardener here at The Cedars: “I felt that many people were very inspired and lit up when they entered the garden. Even though we are very new on the scene, I felt well received by the community.” Here’s some Wimberley Garden Tour visitors enjoying our garden …Thanks to ... Read More...

This week we're excited to announce that The Cedars Ranch will be featured in this Saturday's Wimberley Garden Tour! Presented by the Wimberley Garden Club, and joined by the Wimberley Valley Art League, The Cedars Ranch will be one of 7 “unique gardens” visited by participants on the annual tour of gardens in the Wimberley area.Come join us for a wonderful day! For more information visit the Wimberley Garden Club website: www.wimberleygardenclub.org Let’s have a quick BEFORE and AFTER glim... Read More...

It’s not all brides, make-up and glamorous style shoots here at The Cedars Ranch! We’re still working hard from the ground up, creating the best possible environment here at The Cedars!In keeping with our focus on sustainable landscaping, and doing what’s best for our Texan ranch land, we’ve been focusing on restoring some of the rough open space near the front of the property to native grassland. For the past week or so, a team of permaculturists* led by Shannon Bro... Read More...

Spring is officially here! We are welcoming plenty of new growth and witnessing the blossoming of ideas and visions, here at The Cedars Ranch.This week we welcomed a healer friend to visit The Cedars. Izzy Swanson is a Reiki Healer with Transformation Reiki, who, like a lot of wellness professionals in the Austin and surrounding area, is interested in running healing and wellness retreats in the Hill Country. Read More...

This week we've had Bartlett Tree Experts out on our land, tree pruning to their hearts' content!! We're excited at the impact all the pruning is having, and love getting our trees cared for!They are focusing on our outdoor wedding ceremony site, for now. That area has a lot of beautiful trees, but they need some tender loving care! We're having our first “Open House” in February, and we’d love to share a beautiful outdoor ceremony site with visiting brides... Read More...

The Southern Exposure crew continued work on the inside of our garden and maintenance shed, this week. Here, you can see the back wall going up (just in time for this cold weather!) ...Otherwise, things have been a little quieter on the land this week. As you know, all our garden stonework and construction is completed, and awaiting planting. Read More...

This week we share some photos from our local architect Jamie Crawley, HA Architecture. He paid us a visit at The Cedars to check out progress with the maintenance shed and garden."It's a great day for a Texas Hill Country excursion and project site visit. The Cedars Ranch is a 20 acre green wedding venue we are fortunate to be a part of with our collaborators Acre Architects of New Brunswick. Read More...

There's been huge progress with our maintenance and garden shed this week. Southern Exposure are doing such a great job with the construction and siding. Here's Kirby and Paige hard at work ...We're already starting to store some of our machinery in there! Look how beautiful the inside shed walls look too! In the photo above, you can peek through the gap and see our garden and gazebo in the distance. Read More...

It's been another busy construction week at The Cedars Ranch. Let's go on a tour and show you our latest updates!GardenOur first stop is the garden. Our stonemasons are making a lot of progress with our stone pathways and raised garden beds. Read More...

Work on our maintenance and garden shed continues this week. The 12 foot walls are framed, and the first section of the ridge beam has just been installed. Here's Tony and Matt, from Southern Exposure setting the rafters.We're loving some of the comments from the Southern Exposure crew on social media, about working at The Cedars ... "Our crew which includes Paige, Tony, Matt, and I have been getting to install SO much good design at The Cedars Ranch in Wimberley, Texas. Read More...

This week, we're back to the garden!Garden GazeboCheck out the progress with our beautiful stone pathways leading to our garden gazebo. This is our very own stone reclaimed from the land too. Isn't this beautiful? As you can see, our stone masons are true artists.Work is continuing on the rest of the garden surrounding the gazebo. Read More...

There's been a lot of exciting movement and progress at The Cedars this week. Yesterday, our local architect, Jamie from HA Architecture, dropped by with a massive roll of newly completed architectural and engineer site plans under his arm!These engineer stamped plans for The Cedars Ranch include structural plans, foundation plans, floor plans, plumping site plans, electrical site plans and much more architectural and engineering detail for our future development. They literally outline the... Read More...

This week we had some special visitors at The Cedars. Fiona and Tara flew all the way from Ireland to visit us and view progress at the ranch!! Well, Fiona was actually in the US to visit her sister Brenda, who is part of our Cedars Ranch team! Read More...

It's been another busy week here at The Cedars Ranch. The Southern Exposure crew, Kirby, Paige, Tony and Matt have been continuing their hard work under the Texan sunshine, finishing the garden gazebo and planting the berms.Here's some photos of the continued construction of the new garden's octagonal gazebo ... Kirby and Matt figuring it out ...Look at that pretty roof structure ... Our beautiful new gazebo is nearly finished ...Elsewhere on the land, the permaculture crew have been p... Read More...

If you've been following us the last few weeks, you'll know that we've had the "Southern Exposure" permaculture team out on our land, transforming our garden and sections of the surrounding landscape. Well, the work continues! This week the focus has been on constructing our new garden gazebo. While sitting down to redesign our garden a few weeks ago, we both jumped at the chance to include a gazebo in our upgraded garden plans. Read More...

What a busy 2 weeks here at The Cedars Ranch! The Southern Exposure permaculture team have been hard at work, transforming our garden and adjacent landscape!You all know our garden by now, as we often feature it here in our blog. Well, it’s in the process of getting a HUGE makeover! Read More...

This week we thought we would share a little about how The Cedars Ranch is “going green”. Environmental responsibility and sustainability are central values for us, in the development and operation of The Cedars. Being eco-conscious, climate responsible, and simply just "smart" in how we use natural resources, feels good to us, is good for the planet and is good business sense too. GREEN BUILDING DESIGNWanting both incredibly beautiful and sustainable design, we h... Read More...

It has been a busy and exciting week at The Cedars. We ended last week with the foundation frame for the event bar / shed shack in place. Well, as of yesterday, we have a fully laid colored foundation! Read More...

This week the septic specialist was out on the land, testing to see where on the site we can put the new septic system! I know, I know, probably not the most glamorous subject, but we’re excited! This is the next step in moving towards our first foundation being constructed, and our shed shack (future event bar) being moved to its permanent location. Read More...

This week we wanted to share a little bit about why we called our future wedding venue and wellness retreat “The Cedars” / “The Cedars Ranch”.Well, the most obvious reason may seem to be that we have a whole lot of beautiful Cedar trees on our 20 acres of Texan hill country land ...... But “The Cedars” / “The Cedars Ranch” seemed like the perfect name for many more reasons than that.The place where Bill grew up going to in the summer, in Watch Hill, Rhode Island, is called “The Cedars” and has m... Read More...

Usually we will be using this spot in your week to update you. Today we include a few pictures of recent additions and “events” but decided on a more reflective focus also. Relaxation is important to Bill and I but also what we want The Cedars to offer to others. Cedars are actually symbolic, as a plant, meaning healing and restoration. Read More...

This weekend we attended our first annual meeting and picnic at Burnett Ranch River Park (www.burnettranchriverpark.com). This is a private park for the property owners and members of Burnett Ranch. We are now one of those lucky property owners! Read More...

Remember last week we moved our future temporary home onto our land? Well, it was baptism by fire, well, actually, water! Last Tuesday, Bill and I thought it would be a great night to spend our first night in the RV. Read More...